No receipts, rationing or online sales: Why Madras HC ordered to shut liquor shops

Interesting to note is that merely a day before ordering all TASMAC outlets to shut, the Madras High Court refused to stay the state government’s order to re-open these shops. However, the court listed out a set of measures that each TASMAC outlet had to follow on re-opening.

One of these measures was to demand proof of residence from customers, ID and Aadhaar numbers. This was done with the intention of restricting sales to only residents of the district in question. This also ensured that residents of Chennai (where TASMAC outlets have not been allowed to re-open) did not cross district borders to stock up on alcohol.

On Friday, the court observed that TASMAC could not produce even a single sale receipt with the necessary details, before calling for the closure of these outlets.

One of the key aspects of the court’s order while allowing for alcohol sales was that all customers would only be allowed to buy one bottle, and could make a purchase once every three days. This order was passed in order to ensure tipplers wouldn’t stock up on alcohol and or gather in large crowds to buy alcohol every day.

However, the court observed on Friday that this system of rationing was not followed by TASMAC outlets. “The number of bottles to be sold to each buyer as restricted by the court, was flouted,” the court’s order stated. This was pointed out by the petitioners, Kamal Haasan’s political party, Makkal Needhi Maiyam, in court.

One of the ways of preventing overcrowding outside liquor shops, the court observed, was to begin online sales of alcohol. However, that hasn’t quite happened in the two days that TASMAC outlets have re-opened. In TASMAC’s defence, this may have been the case owing to the time taken to re-start back-end infrastructure that would allow for online payment and pick-up at a TASMAC store.

In an earlier chat with CNBCTV18.com, payment gateway HipBar said that existing infrastructure for online payment and pick-up could be re-started at liquor stores only after a week since re-opening. “We will need some time to re-automate the entire process of online payments and online pick-up,” HipBar’s Founder and CEO Prasanna said, “We should be able to re-start operations in a week to 10 days.”

However, in the interim and the absence of online sales, there have been widespread reports of overcrowding outside TASMAC outlets, with the court observing that the state machinery was not in a position to control customers.